How It Flies; or, The Conquest of the Air: The Story of Man's Endeavors to Fly and of the Inventions by Which He Has SucceededFerris, Richard
Science
How It Flies; or, The Conquest of the Air: The Story of Man's Endeavors to Fly and of the Inventions by Which He Has Succeeded
Ferris, Richard
Aeronautics
At the Los Angeles aviation meet, in January, 1910, where he went with
his balloon _New York_, he met Paulhan, and became his pupil. At that
meet Paulhan made a new world’s record for altitude with a Farman
biplane, and this machine Mr. Harmon bought, and brought to Mineola, L.
I., where he practised assiduously, crowning his minor achievements by
flying from there across Long Island Sound to Greenwich, Conn.
At the Boston-Harvard aviation meet, in September, 1910, Mr. Harmon won
every prize offered to amateur contestants.
WALTER BROOKINS.
WALTER BROOKINS is one of the youngest of noted aviators. He was born
in Dayton, Ohio, in 1890, and went to school to Miss Katherine Wright,
sister of the Wright brothers. Young Walter was greatly interested
in the experiments made by the Wrights, and Orville one day promised
him that when he grew up they would build a flying machine for him.
Brookins appeared at Dayton in the early part of 1910, after several
years’ absence, during which he had grown up, and demanded the promised
flying machine. The Wrights met the demand, and developed Brookins into
one of the most successful American aviators.
Brookins’s first leap into prominence was at the Indianapolis meet,
in June, 1910, where he made a new world’s record for altitude, 4,803
feet. This being beaten soon after in Europe, by J. Armstrong Drexel,
with 6,600 feet, Brookins attempted, at Atlantic City, in September, to
excel Drexel’s record, and rose to a height of 6,175 feet, being forced
to come down by the missing of his motor.
On September 29, 1910, he left Chicago for Springfield, Ill. He made
two stops on the way for repairs and fuel, and reached Springfield in
7 hours 9 minutes elapsed time. His actual time in the air was 5 hours
47 minutes. The air-line distance between the two cities is 187 miles,
but as Brookins flew in the face of a wind blowing 10 miles an hour,
he actually travelled 250 miles. During the journey Brookins made a new
cross-country record for America in a continuous flight for 2 hours 38
minutes.
JOHN B. MOISANT.
JOHN B. MOISANT is an architect of Chicago, born there of Spanish
parentage in 1883. Becoming interested in aviation, he went to France
in 1909, and began the construction of two aeroplanes, one of them
entirely of metal. He started to learn to fly on a Bleriot machine, and
one day took one of his mechanicians aboard and started for London. The
mechanician had never before been up in an aeroplane. After battling
with storms and repairing consequent accidents to his machine, Moisant
landed his passenger in London three weeks after the start. It was
the first trip between the two cities for an aeroplane carrying a
passenger, and although Moisant failed to win the prize which had been
offered for such a feat, he received a great ovation, and a special
medal was struck for him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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